Other Sites

Photography Blogs

Lightroom 2: Custom Grid View and Speed Tips

Has this ever happened to you? You’re browsing through your images looking for something that you’d like to upload or send to a client. If you linger over a photo just a bit too long it becomes hidden by this nasty info tip! Well that’s how Lightroom 2 ships – but that doesn’t mean you have to leave it like that. Let’s face it, everyone has their own ideas on what’s useful to see when you’re browsing your photos. Some want to see a lot of info and others just want to see the shots. That’s why I’m going to show you how to turn those “info tips” off and present you with two alternatives to configuring your grid view thumbnails.

Since we’re heavily into the production of our next video covering Lightroom 2 workflow speed tips, we’re going to start with the short cut to the configuration menu you’ll need to use …

Grid View Configuration

Using the short cut shown here, bring up the configuration window. Here you can setup your thumbnail views just the way you like. Configure your views to show smaller thumbnails with some details or larger thumbnails with lots of relevant information. You get to choose from a selection of 30 different details to show along side your photos. I’m going to show you two settings I like so you can get an idea in which direction you’d like to go.

Compact Cells

Expanded Cells

Compact Cells – (Checked)

Show image info tips – (Off)

Thumbnail Badges – (Off)

Index Number – (Off)

Top Label: (On) Exposure

Bottom Label: (On) Focal Length

Rotation: (On)

Expanded Cells – (Checked)

Thumbnail Badges – (On)

Show Header with Labels: (On)

Exposure and ISO • Focal Length

Capture Date/Time • Cropped Dimensions

Show Rating Footer: (On)

Include Color Label – (On)

Include Rotation Buttons – (On)

Speed Tip – Scroll Wheel

I’m sure most of you know that you can use the scroll wheel on your mouse to scroll thumbnails in the grid view, navigation panels and so forth. But did you know that you can also scroll the filmstrip at the bottom of your screen? Hover over the filmstrip with your mouse and scroll – the photos will scroll to the right and left.